


as you go

by jessus



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Really Character Death, zutter au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8942668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessus/pseuds/jessus
Summary: With another huff and a smirk that slides off as soon as it comes, Jiyong asks: “D’you really want your last words to me to be you giving me an attitude?” His eyes slip shut again like he can’t help it, and Seunghyun’s heart feels already-frozen, like he’s been gutted open, placed on some cold slab of an autopsy table months from now – whenever their bodies are found.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hiiii again!! here's a tiny angsty fake zutter au i wrote a few months back, and here's a hint for the "plot": i named the file gtop as popsicles.docx all those months ago. now that i'm done with school i'm thinking about writing a longer sequel, but i say that every time i post a ficlet, so take it with a grain of salt since i suck xoxox. warnings for... potential character death that isn't actually character death? and angst! and probably inaccurate things re: human bodies and freezing!

Seunghyun can’t feel the tips of his fingers as he touches them to Jiyong’s face, pushes his bangs to the side, drags his thumb down to press against a bottom lip that’s gone faintly blue. He can’t find it in himself to hit him, to hurt him, not even to wake him up – not yet.

“Jiyong,” he whispers, and then repeats himself louder when there’s no response.

Jiyong’s eyes pop open finally, unfocused for a second or two before he squints at Seunghyun, so close to him.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Seunghyun tells him, or pleads. They both hear something different bounce flatly off of the frosted-up walls in the small space. _Don’t die._ Maybe _don’t die first_.

He’s vaguely relieved when Jiyong still has the energy left in him to sigh, a huffed-out breath that Seunghyun can see in the air and wishes he could get even closer to, if for the second of heat it might provide him.

“I’m cold,” Jiyong complains, and then laughs weakly, although nothing is very funny.

Seunghyun laughs too, though, a soft, pained thing – what else can he do? His fingers stray from Jiyong’s face to his shoulder, and he gives him a little shake. “Glad you let me know.”

With another huff and a smirk that slides off as soon as it comes, Jiyong asks: “D’you really want your last words to me to be you giving me an attitude?”

His eyes slip shut again like he can’t help it, and Seunghyun’s heart feels already-frozen, like he’s been gutted open, placed on some cold slab of an autopsy table months from now – whenever their bodies are found.

“Hey – _hey_. Wake up, Jiyong,” he warns, but he’s feeling it too – the inevitable pull that tells him it’d be easier to just give in, shut down, let himself pass out. He’s so fucking _cold._

He’s still shivering, though, and more importantly, Jiyong is too. Seunghyun remembers from some vague lesson or article or overheard conversation years ago that that’s a good thing; it means there’s still time. He won’t sleep until he has to, or until Jiyong is gone.

They’d put him in here only minutes before Seunghyun, but long enough to be significant – long enough to have Seunghyun thrashing against his restraints even harder than he had when they’d first removed the sack from his head and he’d seen Jiyong tied up next to him, blood on his forehead and eyes closed, half-passed out as it was. He’d spat curses and threats with angry tears welling in his eyes as they’d dragged a barely-strugging Jiyong away, the dark red coming from his wound pulsing out in a slow, slick slide.

The head wound certainly isn’t helping Jiyong keep his eyes open now, any more than the cold is.

There’s little hope that they’ll be rescued. Seunghyun doesn't think they're here as a bargaining chip, or for information. This is revenge, pure and sweet and sickening – they had fucked with the wrong people this time, it would seem, and they would pay for it. Seunghyun only wishes he could pay for it alone.

His phone is programmed with a tracker that only one person has access to, and said person has no idea he’s here. He thinks of Daesung at home, probably having a pleasant evening, completely unaware that if he picked up his own phone he’d see that Seunghyun was located in a strange warehouse downtown. Blissfully unaware even if he _did_ see that much that Seunghyun was trapped, freezing; that he would die here.

He can only hope that Daesung will figure it out quickly afterwards, at least, and not spend weeks wondering if Seunghyun might still be alive. The thought of putting him through that makes Seunghyun's throat tighten.

Jiyong still hasn’t responded to him, his teeth chattering faintly, and Seunghyun hasn’t felt this kind of panic in years – thick, suffocating, spreading through his chest. He shuts his own eyes for a long second and tries to breathe.

When he opens them again a few seconds later, somehow a little more composed, he knows that what he needs to do to wake his friend is unavoidable. His open palm connects with Jiyong’s cheek painfully on both ends after a second's more hesitation. Somehow it's almost _worse_ for how numb his hand is feeling, combined with the sick guilt of it as Jiyong jerks with a groan of discomfort.

“Sorry,” Seunghyun says, uncomfortable sparks of lightning shooting up and down his hand. He then drags them both with difficulty into a standing position, Jiyong leaning heavily into his side, barely supporting himself at all. “If you’re gonna sleep, you can figure out how to do it standing up, _lazy_.”

“ _You’re_ lazy.”

“Am I?” Seunghyun asks, long arms wrapping around Jiyong in a futile attempt to warm the both of them up a little. They’re probably dying either way. But he hasn’t done this in years, not since they first met and discovered the mutual talent for gambling – a talent for creating ‘ _luck_ ’ out of thin air and smarts – that had gotten them to this point.

If he’s going out, he’s not leaving without the comfort of holding his best friend in at least a facsimile of the way he used to, when they were still young enough to get away with it. When he didn’t feel too wise, too old, too _in love_ for it to seem anything other than suspicious that he wanted to touch Jiyong so often, so intimately.

A hand in Jiyong’s hair lets him pull his partner’s head closer so it’s tucked underneath his chin. His chest aches with something different from the panic of moments before now, love and anguish. He’ll never have this again.

“Tell me how I’m lazy,” he demands, voice choked, and has to stop the sob that tries to claw its way out of his throat when he feels the puff of air that is Jiyong chuckling against his chest.

“You want a list?” Jiyong murmurs after a second. His words are slurred, barely-there. Seunghyun would have to strain to hear them if they weren’t so close, if there were any noise other than the sounds of the large freezer working around them.

“Yes.” It’s a struggle not to rock Jiyong back and forth, but the point is to keep him awake, not send him to sleep. He’ll have to make him stand on his own if he can’t keep talking, seeing, _breathing_ even on his feet like this.

“Do you remember... -- that game you fucked up on purpose three years ago?" Another huff of laughter, and then a shuddering, slow breath before Jiyong continues: "Because I interrupted your _drama_ to make you come play?”

 Seunghyun does. He swallows back more emotion than he can handle and replies, “It was a good drama.”

“We lost so much money that night.”

“We had plenty to spare. And that’s not me being _lazy_. That’s me being... stubborn.”

Jiyong mumbles something that sounds like a halfhearted agreement, and then says louder, “So you’re lazy _and_ stubborn.”

His head lolls back when he tries to look up at Seunghyun, and Seunghyun supports him with the same hand that’s been trapped in his hair since he first picked the both of them up off the floor. His breath hitches as he takes in the now-dry blood painting Jiyong’s forehead, his eyebrow, his cheek – a freezing, dark copper stream down the side of his face. He has to close his eyes after a moment and duck his head rather than face the small, resigned grin Jiyong is giving him for another second.

“I love you, you know,” Jiyong says after a moment of quiet, and Seunghyun squeezes his eyes shut harder, shakes his head.

“Don’t say that now,” he grits out, anger leaving his chest in place of what he’s really feeling. He doesn’t know how Jiyong means it, and it doesn’t matter. Words like those – he can’t hear them and know it’s over regardless.

Jiyong hums, raising once-limp arms to push his hands into Seunghyun’s suit jacket. Seunghyun doubts it makes them any warmer by now, his back just as cold as the rest of him, but it leaves Jiyong hugging him back, leaves him gripping Seunghyun’s shirt loosely. He’ll take any kind of movement he can get, for as long as he can have it.

“When should I say it, then?” he asks, and then his head is back against Seunghyun’s chest like he can’t hold it up anymore, pressed to Seunghyun’s own lowered cheek now too. “Tomorrow?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Seunghyun says desperately, unable to keep from slipping into the outward denial. “Tell me tomorrow.”

His heart drops at Jiyong’s next words, a murmured confirmation of something said far too late. “It’s more romantic like this.”

“Jiyong—”

“It’s okay, hyung,” Jiyong tells him, _interrupts_ , his voice nothing but a sigh now. Seunghyun’s fingers clench in his hair and he doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t seem to notice. He realizes, then, that Jiyong has stopped shivering. “Don’t say it back just because we’re…” _Dying. About to die_.

Seunghyun can _feel_ the way he trails off because he wilts, too, finally unconscious, and Seunghyun experiences a stretch of time where he can’t comprehend what’s just happened. Jiyong confessing, Jiyong out cold, Jiyong _leaving_ – soon.

He hadn’t said it back.

Jiyong had slumped into his arms, attempting to reassure him that it was fine if he didn’t feel the same, and he hadn't said a thing. All of Jiyong's weight bears down on him as he struggles to keep from falling, and he tries to lower the both of them without crumpling to the floor himself, mind blank.

He ends up with Jiyong’s head in his lap, after a few sickening moments of awkward maneuvering with limbs he can’t quite feel, and he realizes he’s no longer shivering, either. Jiyong is splayed out on the floor except for where he’s touching Seunghyun’s folded legs, and Seunghyun can’t think beyond how peaceful his face looks, tilted away so that the blood doesn’t show. It's heartbreaking. He counts the number of times Jiyong’s chest rise and falls, shallowly, and then shakes him, slaps his cheek again as hard as he can bear to – nothing.

After a minute, or three, or five, he finally tries to speak. The words drift into his mind, wrapped in their own uselessness, too little too late, and they refuse to leave his throat as anything but a dry heave, then another. His lurches and gasps turn quickly into sobs he can’t put a stop to. Tears sting his frozen skin as he curls his body over Jiyong’s and whispers an apology, presses numb lips to a cheekbone made of ice. He starts to pray in whispers, for the first time in a long time, that there’s something after this life.

And the door swings open.

**Author's Note:**

> longfic sequel? y/n? maybe? if no then u can decide for urself if they're about to die or not <3 hmu on twitter @topult if you wanna talk gtop or any of 1000 other things!!!


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